thompson@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Mark Thompson) (03/24/91)
I'm looking for a specific type of program:
Does anyone know of a database program which:
1. Can handle *HUGE* files. I'm planning on having about 10,000 entries,
each of about 500 bytes. That's a 5 Meg file. Yowza!
2. Is transferrable to the IBM platform. I'm planning on eventually
distributing this database (not the program, but the data itself)
to a large set of users, many of whom do not own Macs. So somehow,
the data must betransferrable (at either the IBM end or the Mac end)
onto an IBM platform.
3. Is relatively simple to use in terms of entry and lookup. I don't care
about complexity in printing or base design, but lookup *must* be
*very* simple - type in my match criteria and go, then result in a list.
Speed isn't too much of a factor, but it can't take an hour to search
the 10000-entry database.
4. Is (perhaps) relational. There are two separate types of data which
are either going to be linked (ideal) or actually have the smaller
table as a set of columns in the larger (acceptable, but the extra
overhead in terms of space/speed is a minus).
5. Is basically flat, though. There are only two tables in the whole 'base,
and what with the number of entries, I'd like something which ends up
looking like a spreadsheet, I think, where I can see a few columns
of many entries all at once.
Along these lines, I was mildly impressed with a demo of 4th dimension,
except I don't think it's transferrable (?), and the relational aspect
seemed a little strange. Has anyone heard of a package called Panorama?
How does that stack up?
I have seen Double Helix and Filemaker, and neither one impressed me. Double
Helix was incredibly confusing, and Filemaker wasn't powerful enough.
Any help or comments people could throw my way would be most appreciated...
Mark Thompson
thompson@m.cs.uiuc.edubmartin@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Brian Martin) (03/30/91)
In article <1991Mar24.054113.1987@m.cs.uiuc.edu> thompson@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Mark Thompson) writes: >I'm looking for a specific type of program: > >Does anyone know of a database program which: > > 1. Can handle *HUGE* files. I'm planning on having about 10,000 entries, > each of about 500 bytes. That's a 5 Meg file. Yowza! > 2. Is transferrable to the IBM platform. > 3. Is relatively simple to use in terms of entry and lookup. I don't care > about complexity in printing or base design, but lookup *must* be > *very* simple - type in my match criteria and go, then result in a list. > Speed isn't too much of a factor, but it can't take an hour to search > the 10000-entry database. > 4. Is (perhaps) relational. 4th Dimension is a very solid product. I'm running a multi-user 120MB medical database, and performance is quite good. An indexed multi-conditional search on a 300,000+ record file takes less than 5 seconds to execute. Data can be easily exported to text, dif or sylk files. For simple database applications, 4D is easy to learn and implement. -- Brian K. Martin, M.D. Honolulu, Hawai`i INTERNET: martin@medix.pegasus.com, bmartin@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu ARPA: uhccux!bmartin@nosc.MIL